


The Spaces In Between

by MonsterTesk



Series: World's Tallest Disaster [2]
Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Children, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-09 07:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterTesk/pseuds/MonsterTesk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when Nick thought that one day he could live normal; could have a lover and a job and be a nice law-abiding citizen. Now he knows different. Sequel to Those Things Without Words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue To The Spaces In Between

He was reeling in the light, a visible strike against the whited out trees. White shapes against a white board. His jeans looked dark and feeble in the over-powering color. It seemed he spent all of his time running away these days.

When he was twelve Aunt Marie had taken him south during winter. In a rickety old Toyota, they had climbed the Sierra Nevadas. She had said it was a surprise trip- a Christmas holiday. Nick hadn't believed her breathless with nerves claims. He had simply jerked his head once and climbed out to close the rusted cattle gate behind the car. He was used to following orders and never getting explanations, pretending to forget the scars and the knife under his mattress.

The inside of the cabin had been moss green and mustard. He missed the first week of school up in the cabin, with nothing to do but let his legs carry him as far away as they could before turning around and trudging back. His aunt had sat outside the horse stable turned garage with the door cracked, witling small caricatures of bears.

Over dinner she would take stuttering words and a terrifying glint in her eyes to press into him stories. It started with Mother Goose and her orphan collection and ended with the Trickster –Coyote- and how his "harmless" pranks sometimes leant to more sinister things for those involved. In the middle had been the Interlopers- a hound man and a fox girl who had wanted to be together; they were each other's true love. At the end of the story, the fox family had used the roughness of a barky tree to violently skin the hound man whose howls had echoed in the canyon unanswered as his family huddled around their matron and watched her cube the fox girl's heart and fry it in a skillet.

Now running through the same mountains so many years later Nick was reminded of that winter vacation. His breath fogged, he could feel the moisture cling to his dry, cold face. He would keep telling himself not much farther, not much longer, it's almost over until it was.

Leaning against an oak tree, he breathed deep and allowed himself a moment to feel sorrow. He really had thought this had been done, over, completed. He spat into the snow, his stomach turning queasy from swallowing too much blood. The red in the snow brought him back to that winter vacation.

He had fallen in a gulley, granite rock too steep on one side for him to climb and the other side too muddy and covered in wild berry vines to safely climb. It had taken him hours to find his way out and back to the cabin. When he had the snow in front of the garage had been splashed in something black, it didn't melt like Nick knew snow did when covered in water. It seemed frozen and porous like the lava rocks his science teacher had showed them earlier that year. There had been dabs of red leading back to the cabin's back door.

Nick shakes himself from the memory, suddenly terrified to remember any farther and takes off again. Just a little more, he tells himself, just a little farther, he was so close.

It still hit him sometimes. He'd be cleaning the dishes or standing inside his door going through his mail and it would hit him like a prickling all over: a warm flush of guilt followed by the prickling sensation of grief. It always felt like this, with his whole body tense and hot- shame and guilt and the most horribly happy whisper in the back of his head reminding him that he will never have to deal with him again. Then the grief sets in like he's standing naked in the middle of a parking lot, his toes curled into the gritty slush below with his head tipped back, neck straining almost painfully with little starbursts of affection, love, sadness, and pain landing on his body and melting like quiet little snowflakes in the night. It seemed so peaceful and that was always the problem because it was. Grief was peaceful, nice in a near-cripplingly depressed way. He enjoyed the silence of an empty house and an eventless life. It was peaceful- tranquil with the only excitement being if he could finish an order on time.

When the silence was so loud it overwhelmed him, Monroe would walk into the kitchen and lean against the wall, bury his face in the soft leather and move his head lightly. He'd listen to the scrape of his beard against the jacket and dig his fingers into it as if it were on the man it belonged to. It felt petty and right and a little more than melodramatic to want more than anything to be held in the arms of a man whom the news reported had been fished out of the Willamette.

Monroe loved the peace and quiet, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.


	2. Whisper To Me In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things I never speak of. Things that whisper to me in the dark. They come so swiftly to comfort me. These nasty little shades at night… Then when the lights do go out They step through the spaces in between They sweetly torture me with these things I'll never speak.

Monroe is beginning to suspect that his life is being written by a bored, sexually frustrated, sadistic twenty-something with a morbid thing about fake death.

"Do you ever actually stay dead?"

He isn't even all that surprised, really.

"Before we begin the 'you bastard I thought you were dead again' talk can I use your bathroom? It's been a long drive…"

Monroe sighs and holds the door open. Nick flashes him a quick grin and darts past. The bathroom and the front door close at the same time. Monroe walks to the kitchen to the sounds of Nick unbuckling his belt, unzipping, then, of course, the obvious sounds. He gets out two beers because it just seems like standard operation at this point. Monroe sits on his stool, back against the counter, head resting on the cabinet next to him, beer dangling in his hand between his knees.

"So… I'm not dead." Monroe watches Nick with a sideways look as Nick rubs his hands on the sides of his thighs.

"Congratulations."

"I… uh… you're not very happy."

"It's three in the morning. I was having a good dream. Why don't you ever," here Monroe gestures half-assedly, "re-animate at a reasonable hour? I mean I know the undead have a thing for the witching hour but is it too much to ask for you to show up during regular business hours?"

Nick is smiling; Monroe can feel the irritating shape of his lips. The beer is taken from his hand and Nick's thighs brush Monroe's knees.

"Would you like me to make it up to you?" Nick skims a single finger teasingly above the band of Monroe's pants, barely dipping his finger underneath. Monroe's dick reacts before his brain: trapping Nick with his knees and rolling his hips up, both demanding and offering in the same gesture.

Monroe really wished he knew what his body was doing because it obviously isn't on board with the Saying No and Kicking Nick Out Plan. He still hasn't moved his hand from where it had hung between his legs. Now it brushes passively against Nick's jeans. Monroe resists many urges involving his hand and Nick's jeans.

Until Nick presses closer and runs his hand slowly down Monroe's chest, a sinfully innocent smile on his devil-lips. Then Monroe's hand is steadily edging down the inner seam of Nick's jeans. Monroe leans up and Nick follows suit, leaning down and hovering his lips close to Monroe's.

"I want," Monroe grazes his lips against Nick's briefly, a wicked smile on his face. "To be done with getting woken up in the middle of the night by you."

Nick's hand presses into his side and slides down, following the line of his hip, pressing his thumb into the soft inner portion of his hip.

"I can think of some pretty pleasant ways for me to wake you up."

"Tempting, Nick, but why are you here?"

"It can wait till morning," he replies while slowly dropping to his knees. Monroe's breath catches and his head thumps against the cabinet behind him.

The thing gurgled merrily. Nick pressed his lips together in disgust. A bleb frothed from its mouth the color of crude oil, the texture of freshly poured milk.

"Do you think we don't know your weaknesses?" It chuckled wetly.

"We made a deal. You can't interfere with them."

"Oh, Hansel, do you think we don't know about your little puppy love?" It raised a hand and rubbed its lips. A smear like black lipstick spread where it touched. Nick felt queasy.

"How quaint. But don't worry, there are rats in your big bad wolf's walls same as everyone else."

"What're you going to do to him? What do you want of me for his safe passage?"

"Oh you sweet little Snow White. It's too late. Your wolf is huffing and puffing right now and we're going to blow his house down."

Nick let out an ardent cuss and turned to flee. Its laughter chased after him, popping like soap bubbles in his stomach.

"Not even you, little grimm boy, can outrun your shadow!"

He was an avalanche through the woods. A cold force more powerful than anything, nothing could outrun him. Nick concentrated hard on that feeling of power, pictured it in his head as clear as he could. A mass of snow rushing uncontrollably through the woods, breaching the forest's boundaries and stopping in Monroe's back yard.

Nick jammed a couple fingers on the doorknob. He could care later. Right now he had to make sure. Had to keep Monroe safe. He just hoped he could make it in time.


	3. Stains and Disgust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing about marble is it doesn't yield, Rip, tear, give and fold over. Noxious words from a nauseous person. Heart hurt, Stomach hurt, headache. I did this. I can do nothing else. The thing About sculptures (paper, plastic, or marble?) is that no one asks it what it's trying to say. They think they know all about it after they look. Twice.

**"At any point in time are you going to tell me what that was?**

Nick turned the sink on and tried to wash his hands clean. He looked over his shoulder briefly to check on Monroe. Still sitting on the floor against the wall, breathing heavily with one hand clutching the front of his now soiled jeans.

"You know what it was."

"No, really, I don't." Nick dried his hands very carefully, making sure to get all of the goo of its guts off his hands.

"You know this world better than I. You know what that was," Nick said as he stared down at the now stained towel. "Sorry, I ruined your towel."

"Please tell me what that was, Nick." Monroe's voice sounded slightly more panicky with every word he said.

"I can't."

"Not that crap again. That… thing was in my house and it looked like you and…" Monroe abruptly stopped talking and shuddered, clutching tighter at his undone jeans.

"And what?" Nick leaned against the counter, dirty towel gripped tightly, his jaw clenching and unclenching unconsciously.

"You can't keep this stuff from me anymore, man. It was in my house and it was… it's everywhere!" Monroe stood up, redoing his jean buttons. His eyes were wide as he edged around the fading stain on his floor.

"You know what it was, Monroe."

"There are no Wesson like that."

"They wouldn't call themselves that," Nick said absently. "You need to pack."

"What? Wait, what?"

"We might not have much time before they try again."

Monroe shook his head, staring down at the stain, now barely more than a shadow.

"This is unbelievable," he said.

Nick couldn't help laughing at that. It sounded more like he was trying to sob and scream at the same time and choked than like any real laugh aught to sound.

 **Disgust, in all its various forms is a word that Monroe uses frequently.** Most often to describe himself. The word embodies its definition. The first syllable starts by causing the upper lip to retract from over the teeth, baring them in a slight snarl of revulsion, and finishes off with a hiss meant to repel that thing which causes the word. The second syllable is more guttural, the jaws crack open and flinch as if the stomach has turned and is about to eject its contents. The mouth corners pull down and drag the rest of the face with them clearly displaying how repugnant the subject of this adjective is. It ends with another hiss, abruptly stopped by a sharp and projectile 't.' The word is powerful and evocative. Sometimes it seems like a hideously beautiful word, graceful and compelling in its metaphorical stench.

Monroe had never thought that the word would be unsuitable to describe something he found repulsive. So the fact that it fell short now to describe just how… how… disgusted he was seemed inconceivable. Monroe felt like a computer, stuck. He had a rotating circle of a blank face. He may as well have had 'Loading… Loading… Connection Error: Unable To Find Server. Try Again' flashing through his eyes.

He sat there, just attempting to remember how to breath, seeing that thing's face morph and implode while Nick stood behind it with some strange dagger in his hand. He had never seen that before. Though parts of what happened seemed familiar like when he saw furniture that an old lover had owned or a particular style of clothing that harkened him back to times in his life half remembered and long past. Monroe felt like he knew what just happened even as the larger part of his brain quailed at the thought of understanding anything about that black slick now spread across his kitchen or the way that thing's face had split at the lips and dribbled black, it's eyes pressing out and bulbous and splitting just like the mouth had at the corner of its eyes. It had been hideous. Far more so than Monroe had words for.

The way Nick talked, though, was familiar like some old memory he remembered having. It was like all the things in his brain that could help him figure this out were so intangible and faded. Like a picture of a video off of TV. He didn't want to remember, though. It was like he was terrified to know what he knew.

Which was silly. He was the big bad wolf. He could do this. Maybe. But he was so afraid. Monroe felt like he did when grandmother would sit him down by the fire in the evening and teach him his place in the forest of life. He would shake and stare at her with big eyes when she'd describe how if he wasn't smart he'd be strung up by his ankles and gutted like his great great grand pappy, Silas. It was never so direct, never such a straightforward threat but the message was always received loud and clear: be a clever blutbad and maybe you'll be able to sit with your grandpups and like she was then.

So he redid his jeans, stood up, tried a little more to remember what he knew and when it finally hit him he said "This is unbelievable."

Nick laughed and Monroe felt like a little kid lost in the sunless, ancient part of the forest where his ancestors themselves had even paused to look over their shoulders for those things that dwelled in the corner of the eye.


	4. A Copper Soup: The Melting Pot of Bitterness and Temptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dark I found my wings. I tried to fly with them… They shattered like crystallized sugar. I fell and my wings cut me. Here I sit in a coppery soup of my own failures. The sweet tang of crushed ambition burns me. This false success has made me want for sight more now than I had when I thought it impossible to possess.

Monroe floated (flew?) in a jungle old and feral the way nothing was anymore. It wasn't the civilized sort of wildlife that humanity had crafted around itself, full of predictable dangers and comforting darkness. This jungle was bright and cluttered and slick with life. Monroe shivered, feeling no eyes on him as he drifted down. He was puny here, insignificant.

He felt his paws touch down and become as solid as the world around him. He felt strange and more natural than he ever had before. The pads of his paws and his underbelly felt like scales. Like the ghost of scales.

He was a creature of the Oncewas. A phantom of someone else's spirit mixed with his. A brindled black snake with cat's paws and ears, its whole body the dexterous tail of a snake's body. Monroe pricked his ears and whined. He licked his lips with a forked tongue and followed the snake, feeling the phantom pull of primeval need to stay close. The snake had one wolf eye, one leopard eye, both ringed by scales and without eyelids. Its wide forked and abrasive tongue flicked out of a snout that was some grim mixture of snake, leopard, and wolf. He lead Monroe into a clearing in which set a clapboard house or a great house shaped tree. Monroe remembers feeling confusion at the stories of the Oncewas, at the strange logic of the Other World. Now it all seemed to be perfectly sensible.

The edge of the clearing was lined with large stones specked with iron. He could feel the pain of the grounding Earth through it. The only way through was a break at which a bridge had been made over a healthy creak. The snake crossed the bridge. Inside the stones, the snake, and everything else flickered. Monroe, pacing at the edge of the bridge, witnessed the snake shake itself and stand into Nick.

Nick called out sounds that some part of Monroe's brain recognized as a name. The front door flew open and out the house came two small children. They were followed by a third child walking soberly with a red haired woman. Monroe recognized her. Juliette.

The first two kids ran up and hugged Nick's legs, their hair curling into dark little locks around their face. Their tiny voices peeled the fur off of Monroe. The little girl looked just like Nick. Monroe felt naked without his fur, wrong and deceitful. 

Something flickered in the corner of Monroe's eye. A puma with large dragon fly wings fluttered next to his head. It turned to look at Monroe and he saw the thing's face melt. A blond woman with gray eyes that split at the corners. Her face had puma markings. She seemed beautifully well known.

"This is what he's keeping from you. Why he had to run in the first place," she said, her voice deep and edgeless like Elvis.

"Triplets," she said, "and a loving wife. This is why you don't matter to him."

"This is a dream."

"You are asleep but you are not dreaming, blutbad."

"Of course I'm dreaming."

"I give you my word, boy, you are not dreaming."

Monroe simply shook his head, unable to take his eyes off of Nick playing with his children.

"I try to tell you these things. I try to talk to you but the connection is weak, mine own."

"Connection?"

"It's all a garble, blutbad. It's all just leaves on the wind without the branches to hold it in shape."

"I'm going to remember all of this and it's going to make no sense."

"Assurance is in the snakes leatherfold. Check where he keeps his currency. You will see me proved."

She flickered, her wings slowing or quickening so much that they seemed arching and graceful and impossible to look at. She melted back into the corner of his eye, only an oil slick of scales right there at the edge of his vision. He closed his eyes on the sight of Nick and his mate and his children.

Golden light flickered across his eyelids, filtered soft and delightful through the leaves of the trees outside the window. Monroe felt warm and comfortable and more sated than he had in months, years even. He was afraid to open his eyes. It was peaceful, quiet the way the city never is. The only sounds to be heard was the wind shifting leaves on the trees outside and the quiet existence of a warm body curled against Monroe.

Soft hair tickled his chest while little calm breaths warmed parts of Monroe. He opened his eyes to the low and roughly made ceiling. He turned his head to the right and could see the small bathroom, currently dark, with its cat motif and old, disused litterbox. The place was cold, the woodstove having burnt down to coals while they slept. From where he lay, Monroe could see a frog decorated kitchen towel hanging from the oven handle. The well-worn picnic table fit right into the rest of the place. Scattered beer bottles and empty whiskey glasses seemed incongruous and immoral in the wholesome though rustic setting of the one room cabin.

Monroe felt awful and wonderful. He didn't want to look down. He didn't want to see what fresh hell he was going to be in. He also didn't want the taste of stale beer and semen in his mouth and the nagging feeling that terrible shit was just going to happen because of this. He looked down anyway.

His heart melted like sugar cubes in hot tea.

Nick's head rested on his chest, hair mussed, lips parted and pink and a little slick from where Nick had drooled. His cheeks were a warm pink with sleep and his slack face was more endearing than Monroe could take. One of Nick's arms was curled against his chest, fingertips pressed to Monroe in a drowsy attempt at holding him. His other arm had snaked under part of Monroe's shoulder to loosely clutch at part of Monroe's shoulder and neck form behind. Nick's legs were pressed against Monroe's, Nick's toes brushing against his ankles.

Monroe could see a string of hickeys starting at just below the corner of Nick's clavicle and spreading to the other side. They were dark red and purple like the beads of a demented rosary draped across Nick with a pink stripe of flesh for rope to connect the counts of Monroe's sin in a skein of painful and hedonistic colors. The chain of bruises looked beautiful on Nick.

Monroe's dream nagged at him, though. Even while looking at the nude and clearly debauched form of the man he loved. Triplets, the pumafly had said, and a loving wife. Monroe's brain couldn't integrate the Nick who had tussled with children in the lawn of a lovely house with the Nick who had straddled Monroe and taken him for the most excruciatingly pleasurable ride of his life.

Could Nick really be a father, Monroe asked himself as he worked his way out from under Nick. Could Nick with his wicked ass and clever tongue that drove Monroe into a haze of want really be someone's daddy? Monroe searched the floor until he spotted his jeans, lost in front of the woodstove. Putting them on his mind flashed with memories of Nick crouching between his legs and mouthing along Monroe's jaw as he unbuttoned and pulled Monroe's jeans down.

Monroe pulled a Henley out of his opened suitcase and put it on. Did he sing lullabies with the same mouth he'd mewled for Monroe to fuck him harder with? Monroe could still see Nick splayed out on the rug below his bare feet, his dark hair creating a halo of sin above his head as he tugged at Monroe's hips and shoulders and writhed under him. The better question yet, Monroe thought as he yanked on his hiking boots, was why was the idea that Monroe had fucked someone's dad turning him on so much? Before he could get too disgusted with himself, Monroe quietly fled through the kitchen and out the back door.

Elbows pressed into the low barrier between the side of the hill the cabin had been built in and the back porch, Monroe lowered his head and watched a small creek trickle down the mountain several feet away and thought about how his heart had sickened with sweetness when Nick had stretched out in the spot he had just exited in bed. Monroe melted at the memory of Nick pulling the comforter to him and cuddling it in place of Monroe.

Shaking his head he fixed his eyes on the trees across from the pond slightly down the hill and watched the sunlight bound over and down the mountain to fill the trees with a refreshing green light. Monroe closed his eyes and sunlight turned the back of his eyelids red like the fire in the woodstove had when he had taken Nick's prick into his mouth and reveled in the taste. He was so very, very fucked.

Nick woke to the flickering of warm light on his toes. He squirmed, slid his leg over the lump of blankets and wormed his way farther into the bed. Nick felt content in a way he hadn't in years. He had hope in something he thought would never happen. After last night he was so sure of him. Not in himself, no. Nick was still working on that but Monroe… Nick could believe in Monroe with his whole fucking being. Nick buried his face in the pillow in front of him, inhaled the scents of Monroe and sex along with the smell of woody dust that permeated the cabin.

He let out a sleepy moan and curled up. Nick could feel the aches of a body well-used. Everything pleasantly hummed. He felt wrecked and absolutely starving. Nick wanted more. So much more. He didn't want to let go of this feeling. Finally, when basking in the haze of sleep became impossible, Nick rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up, stretched his arms above his head, arched his back and curled his toes, checking the room for Monroe. Nick wasn't worried yet. He couldb't be. It didn't stop the lance of panic through his heart when he couldn't find Monroe in the barn attached to the cabin.

Some of his clothes were gone as well as his shoes. Nick didn't doubt that if Monroe wanted to he could survive in the wilderness. Nick knew it had been too good. Last night had been too fantastical to continue. Nick pulled on a pair of jeans, a shirt left unbuttoned, and stepped out the back door to see Monroe, scruffy and leaning against the barrier wall. Nick smiled, he knew he probably looked like a dope with his clothes hardly on and his hair mussed up with this giant stupid grin on.

He padded barefoot up behind Monroe and wrapped his arms around Monroe's waist, reassuring himself that he was still there. The back of Monroe's neck looked beautiful, Nick kissed it because now he could and he really wanted to. Monroe pressed back into Nick's embrace so Nick squeezed his hips and molded himself better to the curves of Monroe. Nick kissed Monroe's shoulder blade and slid his hand up Monroe's side until he could feel Monroe's (nicely firm) chest under his hands. Monroe shuddered and Nick let out a sleepy contented noise, a hairaway from requesting Monroe to come back to bed with him. He rubbed his cheek against Monroe's back, feeling his scruff catch in the soft fabric of his shirt. He heard Monroe groan, it was a good groan.

"Nick, no."

Nick's heart plummeted into the acid of his gut. Of course it couldn't last; he wasn't allowed peace.


	5. Walks Upright, Like A Man.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But crawl out of your hide, walk upright like a man, & you may ask if hunger is the only passion as you again lose yourself in a white field's point of view... in this landscape a pretty horse translates into a man holding a gun."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had an existential crises over how to write the next three chapters as they're instrumental in how this series will end. First it was what, precisely, will happen, then in what order (as order changed the importance of certain events), and thirdly it was how much detail to give. 
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter's summary comes from the April 2012 edition of Poetry, the author's name is Yusef Komunyakaa, and the is titled Snow Tiger.

**That was Warren."** ****

Nick clenched his jaw, feeling a stinging in his sinuses and pulled on Monroe's wrist harder than he needed to. Monroe dragged his feet, looking over his shoulder and Nick just tried pulling him along faster. This wasn't good. None of this was good. Not that Nick expected anything in his life to ever actually _be_  good at all. 

"Nick, that was Warren!" 

Maybe if he pushed his legs harder then Monroe's mouth would clamp shut and he'd stop saying that. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to talk about it or do anything about it. That way lay madness and tears and punching trees and Nick could learn (after the fifth trip to the ER) that doing that was just a poor life decision. 

"Did you hear me?"

He was just so tired. So fucking tired all the time now. He wished this all could just be over. He just wanted some peace. He was kicking up leaves with how much force he was putting into dragging Monroe away.

"Nick! That was Warren! NICK!"

Monroe's wrist went stiff under his hand. Nick's fingers ached from trying to dig into flesh that was no longer soft and yielding. Monroe stopped moving.

"That  _was_  Warren, wasn't it?"

"Nick?"

"Niiiiick." 

A laugh chimed through the woods, seeming to come from everywhere around them. Nick shuddered, closing his eyes, his body going limp, hand still gripping Monroe's wrist as tight as he can. Warren's face jumped across his field of vision, one hundred different times he had laughed like that under Nick, next to Nick, with his face pressed into Nick's shoulder, his fingers pressing under his shoulder blades, his stomach jumping. 

"That's Warren! Why are we running from Warren?"  
Nick breathed in deep, his hand relaxing and sliding up Monroe's forearm. The wind swooped across the loose leaves on the ground around them. Nick's fingers dug in to Monroe's elbow and he pulled with all of his might, turning himself so he faced Monroe and pulling him as hard as he could. For a moment he was afraid that Monroe would exert his considerably greater strength to resist Nick's maneuvering. He heard the laugh again, whistling through the dry leaves, his feet stumbling a little as he backed against a thick oak tree. Nick breathed a sigh of relief, bowing his head against Monroe's chest, glad that Monroe had allowed Nick to move him. 

"Explain this to me, Nick. Please, anything." 

Monroe bent his arm, grabbing his elbow. Briefly, Nick felt circuitous. His hand on Monroe's elbow and Monroe's hand on his elbow. He held in a laugh he was sure would have been far too unsettling. His life was ridiculous. 

Here he is standing in the middle of the woods on a mountain in California with his maybe-lover who refuses to sleep with him because of some cat fly thing that he saw in a dream who told him about Nick’s children. _His children._ He’s standing here, holding his maybe-lover’s elbow while a thing disguised as Nick’s ex-lover stalks them.

In one shining surreal moment, Nick realizes that next month the triplets start kindergarten and he really wants to see them off for their first day of school. He’s a terrible father, he knows, but he will never do what his mother did. Never. He won’t abandon them.

“…Nick?”

“It’s not him. It’s not- he’s dead. I was there. I saw it.”

Nick curls his other hand around Monroe’s other elbow, lifts his head, and sets his eyes firmly on Monroe’s face.

“I saw it, Monroe. _I saw him die._ That thing isn’t him. It can’t be. It- he’s-”

Nick presses his lips together tightly, unable to say it out loud. Monroe shuffles closer, leaves crinkle under his feet. His face is soft and downturned with concern for Nick.

“Niiiiiiiiiicky.”

Warren’s laugh chimes again. Chimes like it shouldn’t. Warren’s laugh doesn’t belong here anymore. His laugh belongs in the bottom of a river, moving sleek and unintelligent like silt, ebbing and rising and eventually washing on shore after the water has worn away whatever he might have been before his corpse had been submerged in water. Before his body had rocked with that laugh instead of the tide of a river.

Monroe is turning his head and Nick panics, jerks his arms, shouts “No!”

His head snaps back to Nick, a frown firmly in place on his face.

“It’s not him. It’s not. Don’t look at it. Don’t- don’t give it that power.”  Monroe opens his mouth, the beginning of something coming out of his mouth.

The laugh echoes through the woods the way sound doesn’t in an open space like this.

“Oh, Nicky. I’m so hurt. Can’t I say hi to my successor?”

Nick shakes his head, his eyes wide and locked onto Monroe’s.

“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not. Just look at me. Don’t look anywhere else. Not even for a second.”

“Or would he be my predecessor? Colleague?”

Nick’s mouth was parted, panicked little breaths pushing out short and quick.

“Not real. Not. Not. Not real.”

“I mean, you fucked him while we were together, didn’t you?”

He hasn’t stopped shaking his head in slow, jerky movements.

“While I was laying injured from saving your life? I was in the other room, you know. Not that far away. I could _hear_ you two going at it. Banging into cabinets and moaning.”

“Nick, what is he-“

“No! It’s not real. It’s not real. Just playing with us.” Nick brings his hands up to press his palms into Monroe’s temples when he tries to turn his head.

“It’s not- _he’s_ not real. Don’t believe it.”

He slides his hands down Monroe’s face, curling his fingers to scratch his nails through his beard, the rough texture grounding.

 

**“But how does he know?”**

Monroe is so confused. So confused. Wants to turn and look and figure out how this thing is Warren but isn’t Warren.

“He doesn’t- It- It isn’t real.”

“Oh, baby. How could you say that? You know it’s me.”

“It’s not him. It’s not him.” Nick looks more and more panicked every time the Not Warren talks. Monroe shuffles as close as he can, unsure what he could possibly do in this situation.

“Why are you lying to him? You know it’s me.”

“It isn’t. It’s lying. It’s not Wa- It’s not him.”

Monroe tries to turn his head, hearing the snap of a twig and the shifting of leaves directly behind him.

“No! Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t give him that power.” 

Nick’s fingers dig into Monroe’s face sharply, dragging him closer.

“Don’t I deserve that courtesy, at least? You know I’m real, Nick. I’m so real.”

Monroe can _feel_ the body behind him and the more it talks the more he’s sure he can feel its breath on the back of his neck.

“I was real when you fucked me in Memphis. Don’t you remember that?”

“Shh, just don’t listen to it. Look at me, Monroe. Look at me and don’t listen to it at all.”

His face is really starting to hurt from where Nick’s nails drag across it.

“The scratches I left on the table were real. The teeth you dragged across every inch of my body were real. Don’t you remember that? We were so wild for it. Didn’t it feel _so nice_? You fucked me so hard, I had six different sets of bruises from the table’s edge.”

Monroe feels a buzzing under his skull and behind his ears. These are things he never wanted to hear, never wanted to think about. His heart has dropped into his stomach and is slowly dissolving in his own acid. His veins race with a cold, bitter thing like prolonged hunger when all you’ve got to consume is water.

“Wasn’t I real when you held me in your arms and fucked me slowly, carefully, deeply? Like I was the only important thing in the world? I can still remember how your lips felt against mine.”

Monroe could swear he could feel hands lightly ghosting down his shoulders and back to rest, barely there, on his waist. Nick was panting so hard, his eyes wide open like he was afraid to close them.

“Your lips are so soft and… a little sticky!”

That laugh rang again from behind him and Monroe wanted to turn around so bad, wanted to see that laugh happening in real time.

“They’d always catch on mine but I love how they feel when you drag them across my skin, when you wrap them around my cock. You drive me crazy, Nick.”

 _Something_ nuzzled against Monroe’s neck from behind.

“But I loved them best when you bit me, the way they curl back from your teeth and then press down around them with my skin between your teeth. The sucking noises and the way your nails’d dig into my thighs.”

Monroe shudders, barely noticing that he’s panting now, too.

“The last thing you said to me was real, too. Nicky. ‘We can’t do this anymore,’ you’d said. You said we were _feral_ , Nick. I can’t believe you called us feral. We were _glorious._ But if you want feral… I can show you feral.”

“No, no, no, no, nonononono.”

It’s quiet for a moment, save for the bustle of wind and Nick and Monroe’s heavy breathing.

“Consider this a parting gift, baby. I know you’ve always wanted him to give in to you- don’t lie to me! - So… enjoy.”

The last word is whispered in Monroe’s ear, soft and cruel and it sends a tremor down his body, sending him cold from the heart out.

A flush builds from Monroe’s toes all the way up his body. He feels warm- hot and the last thing he remembers is a gasping breath and then everything whites out, pinking at the edges. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep having to command+find_'Nic' to replace all of my mispellings of Nick. My roommate's name is Nic so... yeah... bah.


End file.
